Guadalcanal - Nikmod version 9.2 now available

[Nikademus]

Finally......

Guadalcanal FAQ listed below:

Guadalcanal – NikMod 9.2
Designed by Nikademus and Joe Wilkerson

Introduction

This project was born from requests by several WitP players requesting a smaller more easily playable scenario to have with standard NM changes. As I began converting the scenario over to standard NM format, I realized that there were a host of OOB errors that required changing. Fortunately, this task was made easier by having some help in the research dept. of designing the scenario. Playtesting though, soon revealed that much more work would be needed if this scenario was to come even within the ballpark of representing the true situation that faced both sides doing this decisive campaign. Though time consuming, the project ended up revealing much about how WitP’s operational model works and how difficult it can be to try to simulate specific realities in one campaign while trying to cover an overall war effort.

The result of all this work is a greatly altered Guadalcanal format…..not one with simple OOB modifications take out of book or web sources (Unit A present @ Base B as of Date C) to make it more “historical”, but with many changes to the OOB data with the express purpose of creating the historical situation that both players faced.

If there’s a general theme to these changes it is this: “Limitation of options.” In WitP in general, players have far, far greater options than the historical commanders did for several reasons. First and foremost…they have complete and instantaneous control of their forces. Secondly, resource allocation is usually not an issue. The result of these factors….unlimited control combined with unlimited resources usually equals a far accelerated operational pace. Playtesting quickly revealed how these factors destroyed the “feel” of the Guadalcanal campaign. There were no shortages of supply or fuel curbing operational pace…..forward bases were being quickly if not instantly beefed up with forces making them far stronger than they were during the campaign, oodles of operational aircraft on both sides created an atmosphere of fighting the 8th Air Force’s war against the Luftwaffe….and bases all over the map were being quickly built up making lots of little “Lungas” available which further accelerated operational pace.

But the OOB data was “historical” so what to do? This scenario is essentially an exploration of that question. Guadalcanal was called “The Shoestring campaign” for a reason and the ultimate goal of this scenario is to allow players to experience the problems and even the frustration that those commanders felt in trying to accomplish a task with inadequate tools on hands. Some players may baulk at this and even during Playtesting, debates arose as to this change or that being “too much” or “too little.” Ultimately, further playetesting by a larger base of players will be needed to answer those questions but in this case at least….a small scenario is a less risky investment to play vs. a larger grand campaign type scenario in terms of time commitment when experimental changes are made.

Personal thanks are in order to my partner in this endeavor Joe Wilkerson, who assisted in Playtesting, did some of the OOB research (particularly for Japanese land forces), helped playtest and offered comments and suggestions on changes made and/or needed changes....and kept an open mind for some of my more ambitious (or crazy) ideas.


Guadalcanal scenario alterations:

1) OOB scrub –

Went over the OOB database, adding units that were missing and more significantly; removing those that weren’t there. A large majority of the changes involved correcting time errors….unit’s that were present but were slated to enter too soon. This impacted the IJN in particular which had most of its Combined Fleet arriving in third week of August. Some holes remain…I was able to match TROM info for most major IJN combatants (CV – DD) but did not attempt to verify every single PG or Merchant. USN TROM info was used for major warships, including cruisers though we were unable to verify DD’s. A general reduction of the latter type was instilled to closer match the numbers present at the major battles fought in the campaign. Japan, having the general advantage in numbers during the campaign ends up with a small edge in total DD numbers. (note her numbers were reduced too via TROM research)

Please note before comments filter in about this ship or that being present at x time that I had to make some arbitrary decisions on inclusion or exclusion where the data was either not clear or at least subject to interpretation. For example Combined Fleet.com TROM info included mentions of a number of Japanese warships that escorted convoys to the Theater and back out of, making them “theoretically” available for reassignment but were not done so by the Japanese. In these cases I excluded the unit as players tend to use assets if they are available and off map elements and requirements are not represented.

2) AV reduction

Aviation Support points in the game have been reduced by 75% or more.

Purpose - AV support in the game is based on having X number of support squads being able to support Y number of aircraft (X and Y being the same numerical value) If X < Y then in theory, aircraft service rates are supposed to degrade in proportion to the disparity between X and Y. In reality this degradation is very mild and thus the “elasticity” of having your Av support ‘in the red’ is very large. Having plenty of Av support also leads to 100% aircraft serviceability most of the time which allows players to both conduct sustained powerful air operations as well as to concentrate airpower at a base or bases and launch very powerful strikes. By reducing drastically the amount of AV available at each base, it makes it harder to players to sustain “maximum effort” type missions without suffering larger amounts of damaged (unserviceable) planes in the proceeding turns. It also makes stacking tons of aircraft at one base less manageable.

3) SPS base alteration

This is a two part change:

Part A – Major participating bases have generally had their starting and SPS build values reduced to better reflect their actual capacities. The SPS limitation serves to slow the rapid progress of building up bases on both sides. Under stock conditions, even the Japanese with the unit’s available can quickly build up supporting bases along the Solomon’s chain allowing masses of A6M3 fighters to “sweep” Lunga making the airbase all but completely untenable. The Allied side on the same token can also build up Lunga rapidly till by Sept 42 it can support 2E bombers and even 4E B-17’s making plastering runs on Japanese bases a certainly far earlier than was possible. Some specific Tweaks were also put into effect;

Lunga was changed to size 2 at game start allowing the Americans to immediately activate the airfield, capable of supporting both defensive fighter patrols as well as 1E bomber operations. The SPS of 0 allows Lunga to reach a maximum size of 3, allowing support of up to 150 planes but not 4E bombers. 2E’s could operate under extended range bombloads.

Port Moresby and Gili Gili reduced to better reflect their status in mid 42. Fort levels were dropped to zero to force supply and time to be spent building them up as well as to give the Japan player an option to try to assault these bases should they so choose.

Part B – non active and non-critical bases (at the time of the campaign) have had their SPS values and current build levels all reduced to zero. The reason for this is again, the accelerated ability of both sides to quickly create new bases as capable as Lunga or PM in a very short time period. Playtesting revealed this very clearly and benefited the Japanese side in particular. This is a specific change to represent the vital role of the already developed bases during the campaign as well as to simulate logistical difficulties…particularly on the Japanese side where they did not have the resources or the mindset initially to develop bases between Rabaul and Lunga forcing them to fight a 550 mile war against the American redoubt. The Americans on the same token could barely support Lunga much less develop new bases around the island as is possible in the original stock scenario.

Note you can still build…but it will take far longer now and 4E capable bases are far less proliferate.


4) Air transport squadrons eliminated

Purpose – Playtesting revealed the scenario breaking aspect of these devices to the feel of the game and highlighted a long standing complaint I’ve had with the whole air transport routine. Yes the game faithfully translates the raw tonnage lift capability of transport planes, such as the C-47. However players (and modders) tend to disregard that the supply they are transporting is abstracted heavily. A supply point can do it all….arm a rifle, feed a soldier, service a plane, fuel a plane, arm a plane and provide the tools to build up fort levels and base capacities. The result is that a plane load of supply transported by a C-47 (or other type) goes a long way farther than it’s equivalent in RL. In Game terms, it eliminated on the Allied side the need to make any runs to either PM or Lunga. Even a single 48 plane C-47 group was enough to keep Lunga fully in supply building fort levels with no drop in supply surplus. Thus the Allied side didn’t need to run any dangerous convoys. Even the Japanese side was able to make use of transports to keep Tass. In some supply over Tokyo express runs. Experiments in reducing the capacity load of transports (even by ½ or more) failed to eliminate the problem. Thus, we made the decision that eliminating the transport planes on both sides was best for the scenario. Players can still transport supply via bombers though I discourage this as even these planes can still impact the playability of the scenario.


5) G4M bomb load alteration

Purpose – Japanese 2E bombers with a standard load of 1 x Torpedo default to a loadout of 2 x 250kg at normal range and 1 x 250kg at extended range. This anemic bomb load produced such results that even having 145 bombers on Lunga runs produced no hits to very few hits making them useless in their historical role against Guadalcanal. As a result the only sane choice was to horde them en-mass as anti ship bombers, impacting game play. (some players may do that anyway but that’s up to the players)

As the plane could (and did) carry a larger bomb load to Lunga and back and in order to make them even quasi effective in that role. A new loadout was given them. 1 x torpedo and 12 x 60kg bombs. Because the code does not allow bombs and torpedoes to be dedicated to land and sea attacks separately this compromise loadout was required. (Meaning that if you add bombs to a 2E torpedo bomber…it will drop both the bombs and the torpedo against naval targets)

To prevent G4M’s from becoming “uber naval bombers”, the 60kg device penetration value was changed to 1 and all Allied ship classes, merchant and warship were armored to 2mm on Belt and deck armor locations as well as all primary turret locations. The result of this is that even if 60kg’s strike Allied ships during a naval attack they do no real damage most of the time. (they may start a Fire Level or two which may bump up your SYS a point or so. Playtesting using this change so far has not revealed any major problem to Allied ships (unless hit by a torpedo of course!) and the G4M’s can now achieve a decent number of airfield strikes at medium altitude with good die rolls.

6) Allied ship class modification

As mentioned in item 5…Allied ship classes, including merchant and Aux type vessels have been armored to 2mm on belt, deck and primary armament locations to prevent penetration and damage by 60kg bomblets. This prevents G4M bombers from hitting warships a 1-2 punch combo of torpedo and bomb during naval attacks.

7) ASW sub tweak.

--Purpose. As stated in Nikmod 9.1+ FAQ, I have reintroduced a new form of ASW tweak to reduce the bloodiness of ASW operations against subs. While the new routines have lowered the # of outright sinkings, TF’s particularly Allied ones can still hit subs 90% of the time damaging or crippling them which makes them as good as sunk save for VP’s. This tweak was born in this scenario and tested and tweaked. It has since been reduced a bit as it turned out too strong for the late war scenarios but should still allow deepwater subs of 30+ DUR to avoid a far larger proportion of DC attacks.

8) Air unit reinforcement change

Purpose – Some max size values for reinforcement air units were lowered in order to avoid a bug that puts reinforcement units on the map at full strength regardless of the value you set for them in the editor. This had a negative impact in particular on 4E reinforcements which all coming in at full speed allowed the Allied side to conduct 8th AF level operations against Japanese bases.

On that note…4E numbers were drastically reduced for this scenario preventing overwhelming bombing attacks by the Allied side.

9) Land reinforcement change – reinforcement base and aviation LCU’s eliminated.

Purpose -- Stock scenario comes with a bounty of extra base forces, av regiments and reinforcements therein. A basic question I ended up asking was….”why would all these support units be sent to a theater that never had enough aircraft to satisfy the commanders on both sides? On a more pragmatic level….having all these extra units defeats the purpose of reducing the AV support as players would just simply stack lots of LCU’s at principle points to get extra air ops. This will result in some “historical units” such as 1st MAW not being in the game.

10) Logistical tweak - Daily Supply and Fuel deliveries to the entry ports for this scenario slashed. The following bases receive daily supply from the home front;

Truk

Supply – 1500
Fuel – 2000

Noumea

Supply – 1500
Fuel – 2000

Brisbane

Supply – 1000
Fuel – 500

Purpose -- This is the heart of the “limitation of options” theme of this scenario. In UV, a common complaint by veteran players was that the entry ports daily supply influx was so massive that players were under no logistical constrictions to do anything they wanted and were free to stack thousands of fuel and supply points all over the map as they pursued their high powered agendas. Fuel in particular being so plentiful allows non stop naval operations which often lead to far more incidents of clashes (combined with natural player aggression since failure in these tactics don’t come with consequences or lost lives). The ability to store unlimited amounts (minus some spoilage) of these supplies further exacerbates the issue. An early playtest, with only small reductions in these supply elements saw more battles fought at sea in the first two months of the scenario than in the entire Lunga campaign! Unlimited fuel also allows major IJN units to conduct BB level bombardment and surface attacks when historically the BB’s at Truk were employed more limitedly and were at the latter stages of the campaign used as mobile fuel bunkers due to Truk’s lack of development. By greatly reducing the starting supply levels and reducing the daily intake of fresh supply and fuel sources, operational pace is greatly slowed and it is far harder to stock up forward bases with several months’ worth of abstracted supply (and fuel) such that even bombardment doesn’t produce much danger. Players must now keep an eye on their supply and fuel levels and plan their naval and campaign options around them. Its also a lot harder to simply “camp” your navy off Lunga waiting for the enemy to show up as was often done in early playtest with the starting Allied carrier TF’s Playtesting produced mixed opinions on the current settings. Joe consistently ran low on fuel playing either side causing some frustrations (though he did eventually adapt for the most part, having admittedly been used to having far larger stocks available) while I tended to do far better consistently. This highlights the difficulty of balancing this change. A lot will ride on player style. Joe for example is a very thorough player who likes to have all his logistical ducks in a row before he commits to anything. He also likes to have backup plans and hence tended to do a lot more on the map than I did. Myself…being less thoroughly meticulous, tended to focus on smaller operations devoted to the principle. Hence my supply and fuel levels tended to be better while still keeping Lunga and PM/GG safe. (one playtest where I ran around the map with my TF’s at full speed to counter both operations against Gili Gili and Lunga did produce a fuel crisis that lasted for a couple weeks but that was a classic example of player influence) These values are subject to change if further playtesting by other players produces too much of a restriction. I only ask that players keep in mind that the whole purpose OF this change is to create said restrictions and frustrations that beset the commanders who tried to fight a campaign with very finite resources.

11) Air replacement tweak;

Purpose – replacement rates for both sides drastically reduced to prevent overpowering air attacks as campaign progresses. Japan in particular received few actual replacements, her primary method of reinforcement being to fly in whole air units from other areas of the Empire to bolster or replace combat losses. Their pipeline always ran more on the inadequate side. The Allies too suffered from the “Shoestring” effect, particularly where fighter aircraft was concerned. They could never get enough and even begged the Army to release assets. Change also serves to help counter the fact that the game doesn’t allow for air unit withdraws. Once there they stay there and it makes it easy for the Japanese for example to mass a big Betty fleet at Rabaul. The low replacement rates and empty starting pools combined with historical changes to their arrival times helps curb this.

12) Exp tweak for Allied ground air units.

– Marine F4F and Oz P40 group exp raised. Allows them to better fend off Zero attacks
- US CV torpedo and bomber exp lowered slightly
- Tainen air group and starting G4M exp raised. This allows the Zeros to do a little better in long range operations. Against veteran Wildcat pilots Range 11 attacks by Zeros puts them at a disadvantage…sometimes too much of one.

13) IJN night fighting exp increase

- Mainly impacts Mikawa’s forces at game starts and tends to increase their ability to edge in early combat. The shift provides an edge only. Be warned….surface combat is second only to land combat in it’s random die roll probabilities. High exp is no guarantee of a successful engagement. DD’s of reinforcement pool also scrubbed.

14) Added missing leaders Mikawa and Nagumo

15) Merchant pool for both sides slashed.

Purpose – Another component of the “Limitation of options” philosophy of this scenario design. In stock both sides are given enough merchant assets in the Guad scenario that players can throw them away at will if it will land their LCU’s and supply at the target base. (Japan had enough AP’s alone to invade Oz!) Tokyo Express operations are not needed in the face of this. Now, with the pool of AP’s in particular restricted, players must exercise far greater care in planning their ops if they want to go the ‘traditional’ route of WitP play and load up the transports and come calling at Lunga, or PM, or even Gili-Gili. Encourages classic Express runs to Tass. By DD’s to build up supply and troop levels.

16) Oz based LCU’s all changed to Australia Command

Purpose: What’s the first thing every player does when they start a scenario? Answer: They immediately start reinforcing bases they know will most likely become future hot spots. No place is hindsight greater than in a small scenario like this one. Port Moresby will get 3x the fighting strength it had during the fight (making it impossible to take) allowed by the abstracted and plentiful supply routines. Not here. Players must now pay PP’s to release Oz based unit’s, whether American or Oz…whether Southwest Pacific command or Australia command. PP’s have been set to 50 points a day which roughly allows a brigade sized unit to be released every two+ weeks or so. It also encourages smaller more frequent convoys (reinforcing with 1/3 of a division instead of the whole thing) Makes things more interesting to say the least. For the South Pacific Command, the main bottleneck on pushing everything forward to Lunga will be supply. Its not much use to put Americal division at Lunga the day after 1st Marine Div lands if you only have 1000 supply there at the base (and it has happened in our playtests!)

17) Other changes –

-Buna’s air defense contingent beefed up to prevent or discourage the 6000 foot blitz.

- Several US base force AA contingents beefed up to provide a potential strong defense of Lunga if landed there. Will help keep Betty honest and bomb from higher altitudes.


Final Note:

This scenario by has received more development time and playtesting than any previous Nikmod endeavor I have attempted…something on the order of 6+ months and nearly a dozen playtests. My hope is that players will now have a Guadalcanal scenario worthy of that name, which challenges as well as educates in some of the realities of the conflict. Can things still be gamed? Of course….players always find a way and Joe and I could have spent years trying to think of every angle, of every loophole a clever player might pull in order to give him (or her) and edge that ends up “breaking” the scenario as we coined the term whenever either of us were able to do something that ruined balance or the “feel” of the game. Neither of us is infallible and we accept that some players will probably disagree with one or more of the changes and their impact on the “historicalness” of the scenario. I accept full responsibility for any and all boo boos found in the scenario. (mistakes…corrections were being found all the way up to the final version as usual) Feedback is most certainly welcome. I hope players enjoy playing this scenario as much as we did in developing it. As with all Nikmod efforts…this remains a work in progress and nothing is ever set In stone.

[1275psi]

Nik

This might seem silly, but where do I get your main Mod from?

Ta

herbie

Wobbly awaits me to get poo into sock so we can play it!

[Nikademus]

all NM scenarios are available at Spooky's site:

http://mathubert.free.fr/

[jwilkerson]

I enjoyed working on this campaign with Nik. A few notes:

(a) Carrier superiority is still the key. As things stand, by the end of August, roughly, both sides will have acquired equal carrier forces. And there will certainly be a carrier fight or two. If either side holds back to avoid a fight - the other will be able to dominate the area around Lungga and this will force the other side to fight the carrier fight (or loose the fight for Lungga/Tass). If either side wins the carrier fight (such that it still has a viable carrier force and the other side does not) then this side will probably win the fight for Lungga/Tass. Another possible outcome is that both sides suffer attrition but still have viable carrier groups, albeit at reduced size. This will keep the outcome in doubt and perhaps allow the surface forces to get more involved and influence the outcome, as was the case historically.

(b) Sub/ASW. In order to simulate the dangerous capability of the IJN submarine force during this campaign (which included sinking the Wasp) Nik has tweaked up the IJN submarine experience. IJN players should thus use the submarine force very agressively, especially between Lungga and the rear area bases of Luganville and Noumea. A number of capital ships were damaged by IJN subs in our playtesting, though none were sunk by subs IIRC. In one of our playtests I used the USN carriers in max ASW mode (with all TBF and SBD in ASW mode) and this was so successful, that Nik made a number of adjustments to ASW. In general ASW capabilities have been reduced on both sides. This gives the subs roughly there historical level of survivability. I came away thinking we need to figure out how to port the sub/ASW balance in this scenario over to stock, I like it.

(c) LBA. We also declared that airgroup training workarounds would not be allowed, so use of these workarounds is not recommended for this scenario. The Allies have a relatively large airforce, but lack supply and av support in the forward bases to enable them to use this airforce. Also forward supply is needed for a number of purposes, including building, supplying the troops and conducting operations with such aircraft as can be supported forward. Thus the build up of forward airpower will be slow, but must be a key focus for the player. The Allied player must work to get his larger airforce into play on both sides of the map. At Lungga and at PM/Gili-gili. The purpose of the Navy is to facilitate this build up and retard enemy attempts to block it.

(d) Variable reinforcements. This can be played either way - but I would recommend no variation for a more historical feel, otherwise the Japanese navy will enter in drips and drabs and you may very will be unable to counter an aggressive Allied player, who "knows" that the IJN will not come in by the 3rd week. Of course, it is nice to have FOW and set variable reinforcements to max ... but as I said in this case, there are also risks to that approach. I think ultimately NIk and I agreed that variable reinforcements off gave the most balanced game.

For those wanting a fun experience without the burden of the full game, I recommend trying this one and hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did helping with the testing!

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

5) G4M bomb load alteration

Purpose – Japanese 2E bombers with a standard load of 1 x Torpedo default to a loadout of 2 x 250kg at normal range and 1 x 250kg at extended range. This anemic bomb load produced such results that even having 145 bombers on Lunga runs produced no hits to very few hits making them useless in their historical role against Guadalcanal. As a result the only sane choice was to horde them en-mass as anti ship bombers, impacting game play. (some players may do that anyway but that’s up to the players)

As the plane could (and did) carry a larger bomb load to Lunga and back and in order to make them even quasi effective in that role. A new loadout was given them. 1 x torpedo and 12 x 60kg bombs. Because the code does not allow bombs and torpedoes to be dedicated to land and sea attacks separately this compromise loadout was required. (Meaning that if you add bombs to a 2E torpedo bomber…it will drop both the bombs and the torpedo against naval targets)

To prevent G4M’s from becoming “uber naval bombers”, the 60kg device penetration value was changed to 1 and all Allied ship classes, merchant and warship were armored to 2mm on Belt and deck armor locations as well as all primary turret locations. The result of this is that even if 60kg’s strike Allied ships during a naval attack they do no real damage most of the time. (they may start a Fire Level or two which may bump up your SYS a point or so. Playtesting using this change so far has not revealed any major problem to Allied ships (unless hit by a torpedo of course!) and the G4M’s can now achieve a decent number of airfield strikes at medium altitude with good die rolls.

At work at the moment so I maybe lacking the correct terminology...but - If an aircraft has a Maxload of 1500 and is armed with a Torpedo with a LoadCost of 1500 and 12x60KG lbs with a load cost of 132 will it still carry both considering that the torpedo's load cost equals the planes maxload?

EDIT : Somewhere in the back of my cobwebbed mind I think someone said maxload only affects the airfield from which a plane can operate... and not the actual load out.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: treespider


EDIT : Somewhere in the back of my cobwebbed mind I think someone said maxload only affects the airfield from which a plane can operate... and not the actual load out.

correct. Maxload value only impacts airfield size restrictions for the plane. You could put a 4000lb bomb on a dive bomber if you wished by adding it as a device to the plane's loadout.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: treespider


EDIT : Somewhere in the back of my cobwebbed mind I think someone said maxload only affects the airfield from which a plane can operate... and not the actual load out.

correct. Maxload value only impacts airfield size restrictions for the plane. You could put a 4000lb bomb on a dive bomber if you wished by adding it as a device to the plane's loadout.

Bummer[:(]

[treespider]

But I guess it still impacts how many supplies the bomber can lift...

[Chad Harrison]

This is more of a general question, but I have a single, stock PBEM going and this scenario is just too good to pass up. Im very impressed with the work from both of you on this.
&nbsp;
Do I need a new install of WitP and then mod it to NM, or can the NM coexist with stock? My limited knowledge of all the art, database and coding that goes into the mod tells me that stock and NM can not coexist. So do I just make a new install of WitP and mod it up?
&nbsp;
Thanks in advance
&nbsp;
Chad

[Nikademus]

yes.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

This is more of a general question, but I have a single, stock PBEM going and this scenario is just too good to pass up. Im very impressed with the work from both of you on this.

Do I need a new install of WitP and then mod it to NM, or can the NM coexist with stock? My limited knowledge of all the art, database and coding that goes into the mod tells me that stock and NM can not coexist. So do I just make a new install of WitP and mod it up?

Thanks in advance

Chad

You don't need a new install. The scenario goes into slot 199. All you have to do is unzip the files directly into your WitP/SCEN subfolder and your good to go.

Hope you enjoy it!

me....i'm about to retake my island from Joe the "Yank" intruder who did a hostile Donald Trump takeover of my property.

(cues....theme music from The Empire Strikes Back!)

[jwilkerson]

At least you finally figured out which of us was the "Imperial(istic)" power!!!
[:D]

[Nikademus]

bah!....you are the aggressor. you took my island. We were building a resort there for orphaned baby seals.

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus
You don't need a new install. The scenario goes into slot 199. All you have to do is unzip the files directly into your WitP/SCEN subfolder and your good to go.

Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks Nik.